FOOD: Temecula business reaps goodwill between farmers, consumers

Don Webber is in his third year of Harvest 2U, which delivers fresh fruits and vegetables to 300 customers from Corona to Fallbrook. One of his pickup locations is EAT, Extraordinary Artisan Table, a store/restaurant in Temecula.

Leslie Keegan has discovered a simple way to prevent pain: She eats fruits and vegetables delivered to her Temecula doorstep from local farms within 48 hours of being picked.

She receives boxes of organic kale, tomatoes, squash, spinach, red peppers, peaches, plums or whatever is seasonable. âWhen I donât eat fresh, organic food, I donât feel good,â said Keegan, 44, a certified holistic health coach who suffers from an autoimmune disease. âI donât want to eat things shipped in from around the country, but from around here.â

Keegan is a loyal customer of Harvest 2U, a Temecula Valley-based business that brings the produce of about a dozen farms within a 25-mile radius to consumers craving quality. Since Don Webber launched his company in December 2010 with 13 friends as subscribers, Harvest 2U has expanded to 300 customers from Corona to Fallbrook.

âThink of me as a milkman for produce,â said Webber, 55, who lives in Winchester. He personally makes 150 deliveries a week in his Ford Club Wagon van, 95 percent to homes, the rest to designated pickup locations.

Webber is part of a grassroots movement called Community Supported Agriculture, known as CSA, thatâs turned back the clock to give folks a taste of fresh produce.

Total membership in these alternative business models increased dramatically in the state â" particularly the Central Valley and surrounding foothills â" from 672 members in 1990 to 32,938 members in 2010, according to the January-March 2012 issue of the University of Californiaâs Agriculture journal.

The article said that this home-grown concept eliminates distributors and forges direct relationships between farmers and consumers. The state has more than 275 Community Supported Agriculture businesses and nationwide, there are more than 3,500.

Ryan Galt, UC Davis assistant professor in the Department of Human and Community Development, and his co-authors wrote that Community Supported Agriculture, along with farmers markets, farm stands and U-picks, fulfill societyâs increasing need to reconnect with its food while helping small- and medium-scale farmers.

Webber describes his business as a âthird-party CSA,â because he doesnât grow the food himself, but logs 600 miles a week shuttling among his growers and customers. Webber plans on adding more vans and staff and increasing his customer base to 750. Heâs working on delivering to Riverside and eventually hopes to expand across the country. âThis is a business model that works,â he said.

For 20 years Webber developed multimillion-dollar projects for public/private business partnerships from Florida to Hawaii until government funding dried up. In late 2009, a farmer friend asked him to come up with a plan to help sell his produce. Soon Webber had rolled out Harvest 2U, adding customers through simple signups on his website.

The fruit and produce offerings retail from $30 to $85 a box thatâs delivered weekly or biweekly. Harvest 2U works like a subscription service: The companyâs deliveries and billing automatically renew and continue until the customer stops the service. Each subscriber must prepay for two Harvests at a time, agreeing to buy a âshareâ of whatever is grown â" letting the farmers select the contents of each box.

Webber spends Mondays âforaging,â loading up on the goods which he delivers Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, attending to bookkeeping and office work on Fridays.

One of Webberâs suppliers is the organic division of Maciel Family Farm in Bonsall. Co-owner Laura Maciel, 45, said doing business with Harvest 2U keeps her and husband on the farm where theyâre needed the most. âWe can tend to extra planting, our family while Don picks up the produce and cuts us a check at the end of the month,â Maciel said. âFor us to drive to San Diego to deliver a box of beets to a restaurant is time-consuming, uses a lot of gas and is not really worth it.â

Harvest customer Corie Maue, 42, of Murrieta, who spends nearly $100 a week on fruits and vegetables for juicing, said she and her family like to eat healthy while supporting local farms. âI fell in love with the concept,â said Maue, who owns a nationwide notary service with her husband. âIn the last year-and-a-half we increased our order from a box every other week to weekly.â

Maue also likes the convenience of getting an âamazingâ variety of door-to-door produce, often pulled from the ground within 24 hours. Sheâs attended one of Webberâs educational workshops where sheâs met some of the contributing farmers. âA lot of people donât realize that our beautiful valley is a fertile growing area,â Maue said.

Follow Laurie Lucas on Twitter @LaurieLucas and check her blog on pe.com/business

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